Anticipate your Gainful Employment rates and be prepared for the new GE requirements

Effective July 1, 2015, the Gainful Employment rule apply to students enrolled in GE programs who receive Title IV aid. The U.S. Department of Education will calculate the Debt-to-Earnings Ratio’s based on annual income and/or discretionary income (provided by the Social Security Administration).

During the second half of 2015, nearly all for-profit institutions had to report information about their students, and now these institutions are waiting anxiously for ED issue their D/E rates draft (fall 2016) to find out how this new regulation will really affect their business.

Although it’s not possible to forecast with absolute certainty the GE rates (because the institutions don’t have access to some of the data the Department will use – e.g. earnings from SSA), institutions can project the D/E and anticipate programs that will probably pass easily, and the ones that will have a higher chance to fail.

GE earnings year calculation is three calendar years preceding the year in which D/E rates are calculated. For example, report year 2014-2015, consider the earnings data of 2014 and the maximum cohort period graduation of 2011-2012. Having the information of their students’ loans and earnings, institutions can estimate potential problems years earlier than the earnings results provided by the DOE.

However, for most of the institutions this is not an easy task. Their lack of expertise about the rules and how to calculate the information required, added to the fact that it can be time-consuming and labor-intensive, discourage institutions to seek to anticipate this information.

Educa Insights (specialized in marketing research for the education market) is helping institutions to sort their internal data, analyze and identify programs in danger of not meeting the new GE requirements. Together, Educa and the institutions can forecast and create corrective action plans before it is too late. Educa Insights assist institutions by organizing their data and anticipating amortization of their median loan debt by institutions’ programs. Educa also help the institutions conducts graduate surveys that include earnings information, making possible the anticipation of Debt-to-Earnings Ratio’s.

In addition, Educa Insights maps student profiles to determine who is likely to fail the GE Rule (combining socioeconomic variables such as gender, age, social class, with psychographic criteria, Educa gets a picture of who your students are), and knowing the profile of students who may fail in this new rule can help institutions anticipate future problems and strategies.

The sooner an institution is aware that it has a problem, the sooner the institution can begin to implement strategies for improving D/E Ratio’s. With this critical information, institutions can decide the best strategy to follow as a response to this new GE regulation (choosing to adopt strategies focused in modifying their program portfolio, students’ debt strategies, students’ earnings, borrowing behavior or program cost/price).

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